Nurturing artificial intelligence literacy in students with diverse cultural backgrounds

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have demonstrated the importance of nurturing artificial intelligence literacy among citizens of different backgrounds to shape future society. Distinct from the traditional approach focusing on programming, a module emphasising artificial intelligence concepts was delivered to 29 students at a Finnish university in the academic years 2021–2022 and 2022–2023. The students came from various European and Asian countries, with 76% of them reporting not knowing programming. The results of pre- and post-module surveys on artificial intelligence literacy and concepts tests demonstrated that through the module, the students acquired statistically significant improvements in their understanding of artificial intelligence concepts and their self-perceived level of artificial intelligence literacy. Through reflective writing before and after completing the module, the students shared a change in perception: from being uncertain about the relevance of artificial intelligence to daily life and inappropriately equating it with robotics before completing the module to understanding more about the working principles behind machine learning after completing the module. In addition to the favourable evaluations from the students, this article reports the positive results of a concept-focused approach to nurturing artificial intelligence literacy among university students from multiple cultural backgrounds. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.